Why it's important to read this before you start chatting

Everything2 may be unlike anything you have met before. We have a chat area on the site, the "chatterbox" or "catbox". It's sort of IRC-like, with a few odd features.

What it is

The Chatterbox nodelet is the box at the side of the screen where much of the communication between members of the site occurs. It includes both private message facilities and a public talk area.

Private Messages

Your latest 10 private messages appear at the top of the box, with a checkbox. You can send messages to users by typing /msg, followed by their username and then entering your message. To delete a message, tick the box next to it and click Talk. Important: If your correspondent's username has any spaces in it, you must replace those spaces with underscores.

You can also use the 'Send private message' box on any user's home node. You can get to a user's home node by clicking their username, or searching for it.

Yet another way to send messages is to use the text box at the bottom of any writeup to send the author a message about the writeup in question; enter text in the box and press Return, or click the box marked 'blab!' or 'vote' at the bottom of the node*. In these cases, there is a checkbox marked 'CC' next to the text box, which you can use to send a copy of your message to yourself.

To see all your private messages go to the Message Inbox, which shows ALL your private messages, without showing the public chatter (below). You can get there by clicking the number in the Chatterbox telling you how many messages you have, if any.

Public Chat

By entering text into the Chatterbox without prefixing it with /msg and then hitting the Talk button, you can talk to the Everything2 population at large. Conversations in the Chatterbox tend to be wide-ranging, less than serious and prone to quick changes of topic. It can be a good place to ask for help with the site, but be prepared: not all of the responses will be helpful or correct. You can talk about anything there really, we just ask that people try to be polite.

While you cannot use HTML in the chatterbox, links work exactly the same way as they do in writeups. Enclose text or web addresses in [ and ] brackets to create a hyperlink. Pipe links also work in the chatterbox.

Typing /me at the beginning of a line of text in Chatterbox indicates that what you're saying is in the third person, so it's like someone is talking about you: If I typed /me is talking about himself, that would show as Virgil is talking about himself.

You can also type /whisper, /aside, /small, and /monologue (they're all synonyms) in order to make your message small and self-effacing.

A final source of silliness for now is /sing, which makes your messages more musical. It also has some synonyms, like /rap, and others that perhaps you can discover.

There are a few other ways of interacting with the public Chatterbox area, in case you want to refer to past discussions or keep up with talk faster than the nodelet allows:

Chatterlight
This page is designed for general chatting; it is essentially just a fast, lightweight version of the Chatterbox nodelet, without most of the other stuff that makes up a normal Everything2 page.

Java Chatterbox
This allows you to follow the talk in real-time, but bear in mind that it's not bug-free. You'll need to have Java installed.

Chat clients
A couple of dedicated software clients have been created to communicate with the Chatterbox: Refer to Frogbox and Mattbox for details; the E2 Link and Logger Client also includes this facility, along with various other tools and toys. The "Cbriver" system allows use of the chatterbox via IRC. E2 Explorer is another third-party chatterbox client.

Note that if you are not interested in chatting, you can turn off the Chatterbox by typing /chatteroff in the Chatterbox nodelet. You can also remove the nodelet entirely in your Nodelet Settings, which will replace it with a simple link to your Message Inbox so that you can still deal with private messages.

Finally, there are a number of different 'rooms' in which people can chat. The default public area is 'Outside', which you can get to by entering 'go outside' in the Search box or choosing it from the drop-down menu in the Other Users nodelet. Political Asylum is a permanent feature, designed for debate and argument, while other rooms come and go; any user above Level 5 can create them at will, but they disappear after a while if nobody is using them. Available Rooms lists those currently extant, and Everything Finger will tell you if anyone is currently in any of them. It is also possible to invite other users in a room, by using "/invite {username}".

*If you don't see a text box at the bottom of writeups, you can turn it on in Writeup Settings, under 'Show a box to send messages to the author'.

Rated Restricted, ostensibly based on a true case of a woman who had reversed urinary glands and lymph nodes or something along those lines, absurdly exaggerated to form the one joke in true made-in-the-'70s-one-joke-movie style.

Now you understand why I crack up every time I look to the nodelets on the right.

I'm surprised that no one defined the actual term itself in this node: A chatterbox is a person who just can't shut up: someone who, for no good reason at all, continues to talk and talk and talk until every avenue of discussion has been travelled.

We all hate them. I used to turn into a chatterbox while under the influence. More specifically, while under the influence of alcohol, or pot.

Chances are fairly decent that a chatterbox is usually a backseat driver, or some other sort of layabout or ne'er-do-well.